The Blotter

It's possible that what William James thought he was going to get by joining the Masons was a taste of unfettered power and demonic world control. Instead, he got a taste of another kind of religious experience. On the night of March 8, 76-year-old Albert Eid, who was conducting a Masonic initiation ceremony in Patchogue, got confused and couldn't remember which of his guns held the blanks. James was shot dead.

In a statement released the following morning, the Grand Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons stated that guns did not play a role in any officially sanctioned lodge ceremonies, which is a funny thing to say, as guns have been used in Masonic initiations for at least 70 years.

Not only did the Masons lose a newbie this week, but NYU lost another one, too. Nineteen-year-old Diana Chien had a tussle with her boyfriend, Christopher Lam, on March 6. That evening, she decided to show him what's what by becoming the fourth student to take a swan dive this school year.

Dead or not, the following week, Lam still married her in a symbolic ceremony in California.

In less fatal news, two unlikely thieves were rounded up this week, leaving the streets a little safer.

A 66-year-old Queens man named Paul Berger has probably had better Tuesdays. First, he slips a hold-up note to a teller at the HSBC at 1350 Broadway. (That's the way it's done, right?) She flat-out refuses to give him any money, so he trundles over to the Sterling National on 7th Ave.?where the same damn thing happens! What is it with these uppity tellers nowadays?

A few minutes later, at 37th and 6th, while looking for another bank or maybe just a place where he could get himself a nice cup of soup, Berger was picked up by police.

Yousuf Kism chose to skip those snotty human tellers altogether, and did his thieving from the robot kind. Working as an ATM repairman, Kism figured out how to very easily change the code on the standalone machines you find at delis and grocery stores so they'd spit out $20s when, in their simple computerized brains, they thought they were spitting out $5 bills. In 56 ATM visits since November, he was able to snag a paltry $16,000. Then other family members started noticing the shortages, tracked the card in question to him, and his cousin ran to the cops.

Kism was arrested on March 8 and faces charges of computer tampering, grand larceny and criminal possession of stolen property. He insists that the machines were his to do with as he pleased, and that his stupid cousin was just trying to frame him.

And then there's poor Juan Hernandez from Staten Island. He's been mistakenly arrested three times now because he shares the same name and birthday as a wanted drug dealer. Instead of just, you know, changing his name, he's suing the city for $5 million.